Increasing developer impact through effective communication of software design
BSSw Fellow Rafael Mudafort is enabling software developers to effectively communicate elements of software design to technical and non-technical audiences, including scientists and program managers. Many aspects of software design are typically considered but rarely communicated during the software development process, leading to the adverse consequence of implicit knowledge being lost over time or when developers move to other projects. Rafael is developing training materials to teach developers to communicate design principles and overarching themes (i.e., the concept of 'parti'), architecture, data structures, workflows, and scope of new work--using graphical formats in order to reach broad audiences. The objective is to provide software developers the tools to communicate how their software has been created and why particular design decisions are meaningful to ensure developer productivity and software sustainability.
Rafael Mudafort is a researcher at the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). His work focuses on the design and development of software for wind turbine and wind farm modeling. His mission is to elevate the quality and robustness of NREL’s wind energy software and define a sustainable and rewarding career path for research software engineers at the lab.
Selected Resources
Communicating elements of software architecture and design BSSw.io Blog Post - Visually Communicating Elements of Software Design HPC Best Practices Webinar - Strengthening Development Workflows by Graphically Communicating Elements of Software Design
